Alcohol India’s largest market for revenue generation
During the week of 22-28 march one of the most trending searches on Google trends was “how to make alcohol at home” says an article by the Reuters
Lockdown 3.0, Green Zones: India is one of the fastest growing alcohol consumers in the world. Because of its dense population and increase in spending power of the middle-class India holds a large sharing in alcohol consumption throughout the world. The growing preferences of wine and whiskeys in India and adaptation of the western pub and drinking cultures seem to generate a wide market for alcohol market in India. Amidst lockdown in the nation the beer and wine shops were on a halt of providing the commodities which made the people cross a range of online searches on how to make homemade alcohol. Officials even reported of many people to purchase these liquor commodities illegally. During the week of 22-28 march one of the most trending searches on Google trends was “how to make alcohol at home” says an article by the Reuters.
A 2018 report stated about Indian alcohol market to have grown at a CAGR of 8.8% and is expected to reach 16.8 billion liters of consumption by the year 2022. Two of the highly consuming alcohol states of India are Andhra Pradesh and Telangana respectively. The state with highest alcohol revenue in FY2016 was Tamil Nadu. The drinking age in the country differs from state to state and is legally banned in states like Bihar, Lakshwadeep, Nagaland and Gujarat. It all denotes alcohol to be a chief investor in generating revenue for the country. The black-market purchase and sale of the alcohol in relatively higher prices was done during the corona virus lockdown and is continued normally which is generally poisonous which make people sick and even lose their lives.
Other drug such as tobacco, paan masalas are one of the mostly preferred and consumed commodity in India. The Union Home Ministry had declared in a recent guideline that would put a ban on sale of liquor, gutka and tobacco which would be enforced by the District Magistrate through the fines under the Disaster Management act of 2005; these restrictions were imposed due to COVID-19 directive management. “There should be strict ban on sale of liquor, gutka, tobacco etc. and spitting should be strictly prohibited,” the guidelines said.
Most of the states depend on the liquor sale for earning taxes. This large market of alcohol generates revenue to the country during this crisis prevailed too where the third phase of lockdown showed revenue generation through sale of liquor at highest range although the social distancing norms were disobeyed by the crowd. This section of the economy holds a large market for revenue making India one of the biggest market in alcohol. During lockdown states like Assam hadn’t imposed restriction on sale of alcohol and Meghalaya ensured home delivery for not breaking the social distancing norms.